Are your eating habits serving you?

Are your eating habits serving you?

How many of us find ourselves looking in the kitchen cupboard or the fridge after dinner, not completely satisfied with the meal we just ate? In the book, The Slow Down Diet: Eating for Pleasure, Energy, and Weight Loss, Marc David, nutritional psychology expert, defines eight universal metabolizers, whose power is activated when we slow down, become more aware and present. They are:

Relaxation – breathing deeply before you eat and during reduces the stress response, which can shut down digestion, and activates your parasympathetic nervous system which allows for the full digestive force to be initiated

Quality – eating quality real food is the best nutritional strategy we can employ, as the higher the quality of our food the better the nutrient value the less food we actually need

Awareness – when you eat, eat… don’t watch TV or read a book, bring your senses to your plate, see, smell, taste, feel and touch, experience the fullness of the food on your plate and it will be much more satiating

Rhythm – bringing ourselves into the natural circadian rhythm means that our digestive fire is highest at midday, therefore it makes sense to eat our largest meal then, rather than at night as our natural rhythm prepares for sleep

Pleasure – when we are able to find enjoyment and pleasure from our meal we are able to absorb more from it

Story – our inner story holds important information about how to unlock our metabolic power. Each time we eat, a specific personality or archetypal character sits at the head of our inner table, this personality has a great effect on our eating experience and metabolism of our meal

Metabolism is a journey, it is dynamic, an ever-changing chemistry whose outcomes are not always predicatable. It is a reflection of how you treat your life, in other words how you treat your body – how you nourish it, feed it – is the way you treat yourself. If your body is seen as special then you will see your life as special, if you invite toxicity into the body, then you invite it into your personal world. Your style of living creates your health, and if you choose not to see this you are choosing not to see how your choices create your reality.